


Taking the Hex.

by Henndra



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 08:15:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6147389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Henndra/pseuds/Henndra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Potter is down for the count and Draco feels his world fall out from underneath him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taking the Hex.

His forehead was hot, his eyes were red and he felt congested. There was a clenching at the base of his throat as he choked on his tears, he couldn’t hide them as they rolled down. 

It was his fault, all his fault. Always his fault. Wrong intel, wrong spellcasting and he’d missed the hex as it flew past him and hit his partner square in the back. What kind of Auror couldn’t even watch his partners back? 

He was sobbing into his hands when Weasley came blustering into the room, throwing Draco up by his collar and slamming him into the wall behind him. 

“WHAT DID YOU DO!?” He bellowed.

“Ronald, No! Let him go!” Granger (a.k.a Mrs.Weasley) had cried, “Let him go Ronald, it wasn’t his fault! Ron, RON!”

Weasley looked haggard, his face probably matching Draco’s own and he saw the very second Weasley noticed this, his whole face seemed to change as he let him down slowly.

“The mediwitches and the Healers have been.” Draco spits out, suddenly uneasy back on his feet. 

Granger turns to him with her big brown eyes, waiting expectantly.

“They nearly declared him dead.” He whispers and he hears his voice break. He has to remind himself to breath, not to break down in front of Potter’s friends. “His wand threw him into some sort of stasis, without it... He’d have died. That’s what they said, I don’t know how it happened. That’s all they said!”

He slumps back into his chair and let Harry’s friends take to his bedside. 

He tries to breathe, tries to relax, tries to let the anxious knot in his chest ease. For now, he was alive, or sort of alive. Harry wasn’t dead and that surely had to mean something. 

“Draco!” Hermione seemed to be repeating herself.

“Sorry, I should go. Give you all your privacy.” He rose quickly.

“No, Draco, sit. I was just going to ask you if you were okay. Has a Healer been to check you over?”

“Ugh, yeah. Ministry protocol.” Draco grits out, finally recovering some amount of decorum. 

“Good.” Granger decides, turning back to Weasley, soothing him, whispering things to him, reassuring him in a way that makes Draco feel like he’s intruding. 

“Tell me everything.” He says to Draco finally, “Give me the report. Like you would to your supervising officer. I know I’m not an Auror anymore but I know enough. Give me the rundown.”  
“Ron.” Hermione cries, “Not now”  
“No Granger, he’s right.” He crosses his arms, trying to hold himself together, trying to remember it all.

 

“Harry always takes the lead. Even though it was my hunch, he took the lead, he cleared the top floor and I took the ground level. We cleared the house and made for the back of the compound by the time we reached the sheds we started taking heavy fire, a few low level curses at first, then a blistering stinger curse hit me in the leg, Harry covered my six. We were attacked from both ends, I estimate at least three wands. Harry cast a particularly large shield over my shoulder as I stabilized my leg, using standard counter-curse, it left him exposed and my... my own shield was too late. I didn’t cover him in time. He was hit. I was able to hold them off, but Harry was down and losing blood fast. I ugh.. I abandoned the mission. Apparated out of there, tore down the wards we’d snuck past and set off the alarms on the way out. We won’t catch them like that again, they’re probably long gone by now.”

 

Draco woke up when Weasley’s head fell onto his shoulder. He didn’t remember falling asleep, he didn’t even remember Weasley taking the chair next to his. He just remembered watching Potter’s sleeping face until he couldn’t remember anything else. He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept. Long enough for Granger to have left him a cup of tea on the bedside apparently, it was now cold.

“Oh good. You’re awake. Come here.” Granger stood at the foot of Harry’s bed, a pile of books hovering around her head. “I need your help with these.”

Draco stood up, feeling empty and hollow. “What’s all this then?”

“Well, I’m sure you’re aware of the certain liberties I’ve been allowed in my errr.. studies…?”

“You mean down in the Department of Mysteries?” Draco sighed, managing a false smirk.

Granger said nothing, but gave a knowing look. “Well, I have certain things I’ve been given permission to try. Things, that will hopefully help.”

“And where do I come in? Do you need me to get anything? I’ll help anyway I can.”

“Hold my hand. I’ll run through the incantations. No wand work, I just need you to anchor me.” Hermione took his hand, holding their hands up in the air, focusing on the thick volume that zoomed closer to her head.

“Are sure you don’t want to wait for Weaselbee?” He asked. “He’d make a stronger emotional anchor for you.”

“No,” She replied, nose stuck in the book. “It’ll work better with you as the anchor.”

“Pardon?”

Hermione closed her eyes and started whispering in Latin, letting their magic fill the air. Tendrils of it sweep through her hair like static electricity giving her an ethereal glow. Draco could feel the rush as his own magic joined hers, running alongside it like intertwining currents.

“We’re sending him our love Draco. He needs to know he has something to come back to. Something to fight for. Focus on that love Draco. He needs you now.” She whispered in soft dulcet tones.

“How?” He began, but she was somewhere else, focusing on a higher level of magic. 

The tomes switched over, another taking the previous ones place, Hermione began once more in Greek before switching back to the original Latin. Draco watched on mesmerized.

All too suddenly he felt something pull from his guts, twisting out of his body, he was vaguely aware that something similar was happening to Granger beside him but all he could focus on was the overwhelming sensation of love connecting with the stasis barrier that protected Potter.

Draco had spent too long denying this, to himself, to everyone. Apparently Granger saw had seen through all of it anyway, the masks of indifference, the games. His love was pouring out into Potter’s magic now, crashing with it, calling for it. 

Draco only hoped that it would help.

 

“Draco! Draco!” Granger called to him through a dizzied haze.

“Malfoy! Wake up! You’re scaring the mediwitches!” Ron whispered down to him. Down to him because he’d fallen over, passed out even, fainted!

“Fuck.” Draco managed, rising up, Weasley helping him up. He groaned.

“Sorry about that. Apparently the spell had more to pull from you than I expected.”

“Gee thanks?” Draco sighed sarcastically, rubbing the ache at the back of his head. “How is he, is he okay?”

“Still out,” Ron grumbles, not looking hopeful. “How’d you guys go anyway?” This he asks Hermione.

“I think we got the message across.” She nods but it's all lost on Draco.

 

Draco doesn’t go home. He barely leaves the room and he almost never eats anything Granger or the Weasel bring for him. 

“Shouldn’t something have happened by now? Aren’t the Healer’s going to try anything?” Draco growls, he’s so tired, bone tired and he can’t take this godforsaken chair anymore.

“They’re looking into it, the diagnostics they’re running on him show signs of improvement. After all they did manage the bleeding. It’s up to him at this point.” Granger explains to him, again, as she always does. 

She begs him to talk to Harry, to touch him, maybe hold his hand and try reach out to his subconscious. But he can’t, because Potter looks dead, and Potter’s hand isn’t his to touch and trying any of these things makes the whole situation so much more real and worse.

On the third day Shacklebolt comes for him, and Draco asks for work leave. Shacklebolt  doesn’t ask for how long, or why or any of it, he just agrees, speaks to the Healers and leaves.

So after the fourth day Draco goes home to his apartment, showers, shaves and is back at Potter’s bedside.

Walking into the room was like being hit with it all over again, Harry looking lifeless and dead, the memory of him going down after that bolt of purplish light, it would haunt Draco if he took the time to rest properly. He walks right up to the bed and hovers, he was alone, he could reach out and hold Harry’s hand and no one would think badly of him for it. But he is the Chosen One. Draco has no right to mourn for him, maybe he should go back home and pretend to function like a proper human being but if he leaves now Potter would be alone again and Draco can’t really stomach that.

Hermione joined him at dinner, somehow knowing he would be there every night she brought him food before leaving to put Rosie to bed, seeing him off with an awkward half hug. It warmed him all the same.

It didn’t take him long before he started talking to Potter, telling him things. At first it was just things he wished had happened differently and then he divulged all of this secrets, all of his regrets and his wishes. He told him about everything Draco ever saw in him, everything he’d kept from him and after a week with no improvement Draco started letting the tiniest shred of doubt slip into his mind.

 

“What if he doesn’t wake up?” 

“I dunno mate,” Ron rests his elbows over his legs, avoiding the topic completely.

“I don’t think…” Draco begins but stops.

“I know mate.” Ron slapped him across the shoulder blade absent-mindedly. 

Draco spends a lot of the second week sobbing sporadically. He’d considered himself a strong person, after all he had been through he was stronger than the mumbling mess he’d become. He hadn’t realized just how absolute he was over Potter. How nestled Potter was into his heart that suddenly the idea of losing him became unbearable. He ignored it as best he could but then remembered all over again. 

What got to Draco the most was that it was his own fault. He’d been too slow with his shield and Harry had paid for it and if Harry died he would carry that with him forever and somehow that just made it all worse.

Draco made a routine out of it by the third week. He’d went home and shower after the mediwitches shift changed over, and returned with coffee. He’d live off tea whilst he sat with him and would take his lunch down at the cafeteria. He knew most mediwitches and Healers by name and most would give him strange, pitying looks. 

Draco didn’t care. 

Seventeen days after Harry had taken the hit for him did Draco cave in. He’d quietly pulled his chair closer to the bed and slipped his fingers inside Harry’s and held them, trying foolishly to warm them with his own. It was a small gesture he knew but he kept it hidden from everyone else. Jumping back to lean into his chair whenever someone came into the room. 

 

He’d showered longer than usual on the twentieth day and still felt tired by the time he’d returned to St.Mungo’s. 

He let his coffee cup drop to the floor as he entered and found the bed empty. Potter was gone.

His brain immediately went for the worst case scenario, his body reeled at the loss of him. 

“No no no! He can’t be gone.” He murmured to himself, feeling his knees buckle and give way underneath him.

He should call Granger, surely she or the Weasel were next of kin, they’d know if he was gone. No, he couldn’t do that, he shouldn’t assume he had the right to that information, it was his fault after all. 

“Mr.Malfoy! Have you heard the good news then?” Alberta Albright came bustling through, it was a Wednesday, she’d just started her shift and caught him leaning up against the hospital wall.

“Um, excuse me?” 

“He’s awake! You missed it, came back coughing and reeling, asking for a warm bath and a hot meal!” She laughed, smiling mostly from the crinkle of her eyes. “Are you alright?”

“Sorry,” he smiled dazedly. “I just saw the empty bed and assumed the worst I guess.”

“Oh goodness no! He’s alright, very tired, a little sore. He’s up on second where the assisted baths are! Not quite so good on his feet yet, all out of practise of course!” 

Draco couldn’t believe it, it sounded too good to be true. Harry was alive, he’d made it. 

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at the hospital? I’m about to go over myself.” Hermione met him at the grate of her fireplace, Ron in tow. 

“I came to tell you, I wasn’t sure if you knew yet.” He said stupidly. 

“We’ll go back together then!” She seemed brightened already and it was without doubt that Ronald was looking lighter too. 

“I think I’ll just head on home. Let you all have you’re private reunion.” He stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets. “I’ll see him back at work probably sooner than I should.” He laughed.

“But Draco?” Granger stepped forward but Draco stepped back into the flames of the Floo once more and was gone.

 

Draco didn’t see Harry. He refused to. He’d ignored Grangers owl and her attempt at fire calls, and decided to spend the rest of his week with his mother in France, wait it out. He’d go back to work on Monday and that would be that. He would heal over time and hopefully Granger and Weasley would keep quiet and nothing would change. Potter might put a request in for a better partner but other than that life would continue as before. 

“You look too thin. And for you that’s saying something.” His mother broke the silence over tea. 

“I’m fine mother, really.” He replied into a sip of earl grey.

“Draco.” She cooed, “Tell him. It’s past time. He needs to know.”

He went to bed that night wondering how it was that it had slipped his noticed that his mother had noticed, or that Potter’s friends had. Did that mean Potter noticed? Was Draco so blindingly obvious? Was he the walking office joke? The sad ex-death eater in love with his Auror partner? 

His mother saw him off with a box of chocolates and a set of new robes, he took both without thought and went to work on Monday to find Potter still absent. He didn’t mind so much, he’d need time to fully recover, maybe time to deal with the time loss. He spent most of the day doing paperwork and catching up on missed out casework. His day was dull, his tea was lukewarm at best and by the end of the day he felt an uncontrollable urge to seek Potter out like he probably should have to start off with.

He didn’t have to look.

Draco got back to his London flat after work to find Potter sitting there on a stool in his kitchen, helping himself to his tea and his mugs and the chocolate coated digestives he hid in the back of his pantry. The sight of him there nearly threw Draco completely off balance.

Potter arched his brow at him as he came through the door, completely unaffected it seemed. “You’re a right git you know that?”

“I’m sorry.” Draco dropped his work things on the countertop, “I should have been quicker, I shouldn’t have been so sloppy. It was a stupid idea going there.”

“Malfoy.”

“What?” Draco could barely look Potter in the eye, he looked well rested, he looked so alive for once, he looked, well, really good.

“Shut up yeah?” And then he leaned out of his stool and kissed him, lightly caressing the side of his cheek as he did so. 

His lips so soft, his touch so light that when he removed them Draco felt oddly flustered, “Yeah okay.”

Potter caressed his cheek once more, thumbing at his chin, gazing up at him with those deep worn eyes, “I heard everything you said. I felt everything Hermione’s spell gave me and I remember you holding my hand so tenderly…”

Draco felt as if he were trembling suddenly. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” Harry whispered, his gaze flickering from Draco’s own down to his mouth and up again. “And do you know what?”

“What?” He breathed.

“I reckon I should have taken a hex sooner,” Harry’s brows softened and he swallowed 

thickly, it was Draco who initiated the kiss this time and there was nothing holding them back now. 

As Draco explored Harry’s mouth extricating soft moans and sighs, Harry let his hands wander before taking their place around the breath of Draco’s back, squeezing him tentatively. 

Draco felt his eyes moisten as their kiss finally broke, Harry only held onto him tighter and so Draco melted into it, letting his forehead drop to Harry’s shoulder, curling into him, letting his own hands clutch to Harry’s hips. 

“Don’t you ever do that to me again!” He whispered harshly, his eyes scrunched reverently. “Don’t 

you ever leave me like that again or I swear Potter!”

Harry laughed, the chuckle vibrating through his whole chest. “I can’t promise you anything, but god Draco I’ll try not to.”


End file.
